Teenagers will be teenagers

Looks like Georges Bush plan to stop American teenagers from having sex as backfired rather spectacularly. Despite spending just over $1bn dollars, American teenagers are ignoring the advice.

What's more worrying is that in a lot of US states, normal sex education classes that teach teenagers about sensible things such as condoms and STD's have stopped and replaced with the abstinence only message, thus leaving a lot of teenagers ignorant about important sexual health issues.

The Abstinence program has also been a core part of US overseas aid program. Theoretically it forms part of the ABC program (Abstinence, be faithful, use a condom), but a lot of time only the Abstinence program has been pushed while simultaneously withdrawing funding from programs for sex workers

The Economist and Castro finally agree

Fidel Castro returns and delivers a speech that needed to be made about how the rush to biofuels means that land previusly dedicated to food will be converted to produce fuel. This benefits the first world and increases the problems in the third world.

The Economist, rarely a supporter of Castro agreed.

"But when he roused himself from his sickbed last week to write an article criticising George Bush's unhealthy enthusiasm for ethanol, he had a point."

It all comes back to the fact that the world still believes that we don't need to make a radical shift in the way that we live our life and believe that technology will do it for us.

Offsetting your carbon by planting trees? Could be doing more harm than good

Carbon offsetting appears to be the new trend whereby instead of concentrating on reducing your energy consumption, people find it easier to carry on flying and buy a few trees to offset their carbon emissions. Also known as greenwashing!

A new report from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in America indicates that unless the planting is done in certain areas, we could actually increase the amount of CO2 as planting trees on exposed areas may simply absorb the heat rather than reflect in back in the atmosphere.

Many companies now offer the choice of investing money in alternative technology as well as forestry. Lucy Siegel in the Observer has a piece on how to choose the best scheme

Internet Security - Not important for half of all users

A item on the BBC News web site indicates that just over half of all internet users think that protecting their personal information is not their job.

I don't think that they are deliberatly being perverse and more a case of people not knowing any better as no-one has ever explained the issues to them. I guess the 52% of people are probably also the people who don't have PC's locked down with the latest anti virus, anti spyware and firewalls installed and therefore most likely to have a trojan or rootware somewhere on their system.

Wired magazine has a scary article on how zombie networks were used to cripple an anti spam service

Have a baby and lost two months sleep

According to the BBC News web site, new parents can lose up to two months sleep in the first year of life and I, or should I say may wife Meagan can certainly agree with that.

We've been really lucky with Emily and she only wakes once in the night. We've got friends who babys still regularly wake four times in the night and I'm not sure how they manage to actually keep going apart from a lot of coffee.

How green is hydroelectic power?

You'd hope that hydroelectric power would be fairly sound way of producing electricity and one that had a fairly low carbon footprint once you've constructed the dam.

However interesting new research indicates that the flooding of valleys to create the reservoirs are increasing the amount of methane emissions due to the trees and vegatations rotting under the water. The problem isn't too bad in cold climates such as the UK, but is proving to be a major problem in countries such as Brazil who have heavily invested in hydroelectic.

The Guardian covers this in more detail in a story called Hidden Dangers

Eco Kettles

When Meagan, Emily and I moved house, we realised that we didn't actually own a kettle, which gave me the opportunity to buy the Eco Kettle I had been coveting for a while. Meagans initial skepticsm that I was purchasing another gadget, has disappeared now that she has found out that she can boil just enough water for one cup of coffee.

If you're feeing really flush, try the Electrisave Electricity Monitor which will tell you how much electricity your house is consuming at one one time. Two of my friends have them and spend hours wandering around the house, turning items on and off and watching the consumption rise and fall.

I've linked to both items at the Ethical Superstore as that had the best price on the kettle but plently of other places have them.